


Slowly, With Feeling

by toyhto



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, I really think this is fluff you guys, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25090306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Eames has a bad day.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 194





	Slowly, With Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by [StephG](https://stuffy-steph-g.tumblr.com/), thank you so much!
> 
> This story is written a prompt _You’re normally the happiest most positive person but you’re grumpier than I thought possible so now I’m the one trying to cheer you up AU_ by anonymous on [Daily AU Prompts](http://dailyau.tumblr.com).
> 
> My dudes I think this is what you would call _fluff_.

It had been an awful morning. Arthur had spilled coffee on his shirt when he had been just about ready to leave the hotel room, and then when he had managed to change the shirt and drink the coffee and get to the elevator, he had realized he didn’t have his gun. He had to go back to the room to get it. When he had been on the street waiting for the taxi, it had started raining. He had gone back for an umbrella, and there had been an old lady in the elevator who had wanted to talk about the weather with him.  
  
When he finally reached the abandoned clothing factory they were using for the job, he hated everyone and everything in the world and, most of all, he hated himself. Then he stubbed his toe on a dusty sewing machine on the floor. He bit his lip, walked the stairs up to the second floor and prepared himself for Eames’ smile. He absolutely hated that smile. Especially early in the morning.  
  
He opened the door. Everyone was already there, including Eames, who glanced at him.  
  
“Good morning,” he said.  
  
“Hello,” Eames said and turned his eyes back to his computer.  
  
Arthur looked at Ariadne.  
  
“Morning,” she said, as if nothing was wrong. “Did you have the photos of the client’s old summer house somewhere? Because I’ve been planning to start working on the garden today, and I don’t have anything of it.”  
  
“Sure,” he said and glanced at Yusuf, who was on his phone. Then he glanced at Eames again. Eames seemed to be working on something on his laptop. He wasn’t smiling. Also, he wasn’t saying anything about how late Arthur was or how his hair had been ruffled in the wind. Arthur knew it had, he had seen his reflection on the glass door. And what was even more odd, there hadn’t been a cheesy comment about the tailoring of Arthur’s trousers or an infuriatingly optimistic note about how the rain was probably going to stop before midday.  
  
Arthur waited for a few more seconds, but Eames seemed to be actually working. Well, first time for everything.

**

“Do you know what’s wrong with him today?” Arthur asked, when he found Ariadne in the break room. Ariadne was drinking tea and inspecting a coffee machine that looked like it had been old in the nineties.  
  
“Isn’t he always like that?” she asked.  
  
“No,” Arthur said. “Usually he smiles.”  
  
“Well,” Ariadne said, “he told me his girlfriend dumped him so he’s on Tinder again. No wonder he doesn’t feel like smiling.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “He had a girlfriend?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ariadne said. “Anyway, he said the compound is ready for testing. We should probably try it tomorrow.”  
  
“The compound –,” Arthur started and then took a deep breath. “I was talking about Eames.”  
  
Ariadne frowned at him. “Eames? Eames doesn’t have a girlfriend.”  
  
“Yeah, I thought so.”  
  
“Arthur,” Ariadne said slowly, “I’m pretty sure Eames is gay.”  
  
“ _Yeah_ ,” Arthur said, “I thought so, that’s why I was confused. But do you know what’s wrong with him today?”  
  
“What do you mean what’s wrong? He’s been working the whole morning.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “exactly.”  
  
Ariadne rolled her eyes. “If you think something’s wrong, maybe you should ask him. But if this is some kind of an argument between the two of you that I don’t want to hear about –”  
  
“It’s not,” Arthur said. “It’s just that he’s always so annoyingly positive about everything, and today he’s said hardly anything.”  
  
“Maybe he’s having a bad day,” Ariadne said, took her cup of tea and walked to the door. “Anyway, I really think we should try the compound tomorrow. And don’t tell Yusuf that I told you about his girlfriend.”  
  
“Of course not,” Arthur said, thinking about Eames.

**

He spent the whole day thinking about Eames. It was hideous and also completely Eames’ fault, because Eames was being so normal. He didn’t say anything positive the whole day. When it started raining more in the afternoon, he took one glance at the window, sighed and kept on working. When Arthur asked him what he wanted for lunch, he didn’t joke about it, and when Arthur brought him a chicken sandwich he had asked for, he said ‘ _thank you’_. He didn’t make a comment about Arthur’s shirt, even though it was soaking wet and quite transparent and _Yusuf_ whistled when Arthur entered the room.  
  
Arthur should have been happy. Eames had been annoyingly optimistic the whole time that Arthur had known him. Also, Eames had been casually flirting with him for years, which was driving him mad. The only reason he kept accepting jobs that included Eames was that Eames was terrifyingly good at what he did. And surprisingly nice if he wanted to be. And sometimes funny, but Arthur would never let him know that. And he wouldn’t have looked bad at all if only he hadn’t been wearing clothes. His taste was truly terrible. But he had always been kind of nice to Arthur despite being an asshole, and he had saved Arthur in a dream more than once, and once in real life. At that time, he had gone on a blind date so that Arthur wouldn’t have to, and afterwards, he had told Arthur it had been awful and then made him coffee.  
  
Arthur bit his lip. He needed to concentrate. He needed to concentrate on _the job_ and not on Eames. But it was impossible, because Eames was being uncharacteristically not weird, and he was right there in Arthur’s line of sight doing that. At the moment, he was sitting in the chair, typing something on the laptop. He wasn’t even smiling so it probably wasn’t a joke.  
  
Arthur waited until Eames put his laptop away and said that he was going to leave for the day. Arthur said that he was going to leave, too, and waited for Eames to comment on that, but Eames just kept on packing his bag. Ariadne glanced at Arthur and raised her eyebrow, and Yusuf was sitting in the corner, staring at his phone. He looked like he was about to cry, so he was probably on Tinder. Arthur ignored them, followed Eames through the door, down the stairs, and to the street.  
  
“My hotel’s pretty close to yours,” he said, when he was standing next to Eames on the sidewalk and Eames seemed to barely notice. “Do you mind if we share a taxi?”  
  
Eames glanced at him. “No, it’s alright.”  
  
“It’s not raining anymore,” Arthur said.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur swallowed. “Are you alright?”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said and then managed to stop a taxi.  
  
Arthur sat next to him in the backseat and told the driver he could just take Arthur to Eames’ hotel as well. When the car started moving, he glanced first through the side window and then at Eames. “Are you not sleeping or something?” he asked.  
  
Eames chewed on his lower lip. He didn’t look angry. He definitely should have. Arthur was prying into his personal business.  
  
“Are you?” Eames asked after a short silence.  
  
“No,” Arthur said. He hadn’t been sleeping properly in a decade. Sometimes he wondered what his social life would have been like if he hadn’t been sleep-deprived all the time. “So, what is it?”  
  
“I don’t know what you mean,” Eames said, looking him in the eyes. He had always kind of liked Eames’ eyes. Eames could do wonderful things with them, some of which weren’t decent. Once, they had been drinking in a hotel bar after a successful job and Eames had been watching Arthur the whole evening. They had only talked about climate change and serial killers, and still the first thing Arthur had done when he had finally got to his own hotel room had been to jerk off. And he wasn’t into serial killers at all.  
  
“Are you hungry?” he asked now. “We could eat something.”  
  
“You really don’t have to do this,” Eames said. He sounded tired now.  
  
“I’m hungry and I’d appreciate the company.”  
  
Eames let out a breath that didn’t sound quite like a _yes_ but Arthur pretended it did. He paid for the taxi and followed Eames to the hotel’s bar, where Eames picked the furthest corner, sat down and let Arthur order for them both.  
  
“How did you know what I like?” Eames asked when the food came.  
  
“I have a file about you,” Arthur said.  
  
Eames glanced at him.  
  
“The job’s going well,” he said.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said and started eating.  
  
“Your hotel seems nice.”  
  
“It is,” Eames said.  
  
“It’s not even raining anymore.”  
  
“Darling,” Eames said and stabbed the fish with his fork, “I can see that you’re trying to do small talk, but sadly, you aren’t very good at it.”  
  
“Then talk to me,” Arthur said and waited. Eames filled his mouth with food and started chewing slowly. “I was wearing a white shirt today and it got soaked when I was trying to buy you a sandwich and broke my umbrella.”  
  
“It was a good sandwich,” Eames said, but he looked slightly more interested now. “I wasn’t aware you wanted me to point out that I could see straight through your shirt.”  
  
“I didn’t,” Arthur said and tried not to smile. “That would’ve been very rude of you.”  
  
“Listen,” Eames said and pointed at him with his fork, “I’ve just had a bad day. Don’t worry about it. I’ll get back to flirting with you tomorrow. Or next week at the latest.”  
  
“It’s not like I miss your flirting or anything.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Eames said, but he was smiling a little. “So, tell me what you’ve got in your file about me.”  
  
“You know I’m very thorough.”  
  
“Yeah, I do. That’s one of your better qualities, darling.”  
  
“I think this has been an awful day,” Arthur said. “I spilled coffee on my shirt in the morning and had to change it, and then I forgot my gun, and then I forgot my umbrella, and then someone tried to talk to me in the elevator.”  
  
“My mother’s ill,” Eames said.  
  
Arthur opened his mouth, closed it again and took a deep breath. “Sorry.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Eames said, frowning at the wall above Arthur’s left shoulder. “We don’t yet know what it is. She got some of her test results back last night.”  
  
“Maybe it’s nothing serious.”  
  
“Maybe,” Eames said, set the fork down next to the plate and drank some of his wine. “Are you going to pay for this, too?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Remember when I went on a blind date on your behalf?”  
  
“Of course,” Arthur said and cleared his throat. “I should’ve never set that up. But I was drunk and kind of desperate to get laid.”  
  
“Really? What happened then?”  
  
“I sobered up,” Arthur said, “and jerked off.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames said and smiled at him, “I understand. But well, what I was going to say was that the date was a disaster, as you know. He was kind of expecting a lean-shouldered dark-eyed gentleman with a lethal sense of humor and a lovely frown. And instead, he got me.”  
  
“Lucky man.”  
  
“I only went there because I was afraid you might actually like him,” Eames said, “and then you’d settle down and get married and move into suburbs and give up the career in international crime.”  
  
“I would never.”  
  
“And then I would be left in the business with the idiots,” Eames said. “Terrible, absolutely terrible. I hope you know that you aren’t half as bad as you were when you were still working with Cobb.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“I never realized what you saw in him.”  
  
“We were friends,” Arthur said and drank some of his wine.  
  
“Sometimes I wondered if you were in love with him or something.”  
  
“I wasn’t.”  
  
“Alright,” Eames said, looking at him from across the table. “Is there any specific reason why you want me to flirt with you?”  
  
Arthur took a deep breath. “I was just worried about you today. Because you weren’t being yourself.”  
  
“And being myself means,” Eames said, “that I throw out very subtle comments about how I’d like to bang you in the break room.”  
  
Arthur licked his lips. “Not in the break room.” He shifted in the chair. “You always manage to look like you actually think everything’s going to be alright in the end. You’ve got to know that isn’t true. But you talk like that anyway.”  
  
“Everything’s going to be alright in the end,” Eames said. “It’s just a matter of a point of view. Arthur?”  
  
“Eames?”  
  
“Your shirt got really wet today. I could see your nipples.”  
  
“My nipples –”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Well, that’s shocking.”  
  
“It was,” Eames said and emptied what was left of the wine in his glass. “Very shocking, indeed. I might’ve been distracted if I had been in a better mood. Why don’t you flirt back?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I’m not very good at it.”  
  
Eames nodded. “Do you want to come upstairs with me?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said.

**

In his hotel room, Eames took a bottle of whiskey from the minibar, looked at it for a moment and then put it back. Arthur was standing because the only place to sit on was the bed and he couldn’t sit on Eames’ bed. He felt like he should ignore the bed and years’ worth of flirting and the way Eames kept glancing at him and the tiny trembling in his hands and talk about something nice and easy. Maybe about the weather. Anything that wouldn’t involve the question why he had come to Eames’ hotel room, or why Eames had asked him to.  
  
“At first she kept saying that it was nothing,” Eames said, sat on the edge of the bed and started undoing his shoelaces, his eyes on his hands. “But she looked terrible, like she hadn’t been sleeping in a month.”  
  
“Is your father –“  
  
“Took off when I was a kid.” Eames glanced at him. “You didn’t know that.”  
  
“No,” Arthur said.  
  
“I thought you were the best point man in the business.”  
  
“I haven’t been able to find out exactly who you are.”  
  
Eames smiled a little. “Well, that’s great. That’s going to make things a lot easier.”  
  
“Things?”  
  
“Anyway,” Eames said, kicking off his shoes, “I think I’ve got to go home for a while. The doctors can’t tell what’s wrong with her but it’s something, and this work is just bullshit, you know, the next thing that I had planned was in Dubai and it was for six weeks. I can’t be in Dubai for six weeks.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. I was supposed to go there, too.”  
  
Eames glanced at him. “You can get the job done without me. I’ll think about who you could ask to replace me.”  
  
“I only took that job because you were going to be there,” Arthur said and undid the top button of his shirt. “I could take a few weeks off.”  
  
“We’re quite rich these days, aren’t we?”  
  
“Yeah,” he said and took off his coat. “Do you have sisters or –”  
  
“One sister,” Eames said. “She’s two years older than me. Much more responsible, too. But doesn’t get along with mom too well. I should be there.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Let’s not talk about it,” Eames said and straightened his back. “I like you.”  
  
“I like you, too,” Arthur said and kept on unbuttoning his shirt.  
  
“I’ve been kind of meaning to tell you that,” Eames said, watching him, “but we already had this perfectly good thing going on where I compliment your ass and you tell me to fuck off.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I really like your ass, though.”  
  
“Fuck off,” Arthur said and bit his lip. He sounded a little nervous, which was probably a good sign at this point.  
  
“Do you still talk to Cobb?”  
  
“You want to talk about Cobb?”  
  
“I just thought,” Eames said slowly, “I used to think that I’d retire from this. But I can’t remember how to live any other way. I wonder how it turned out for Cobb.”  
  
“He’s got the kids to think about,” Arthur said. “But yeah, I know what you mean. I kind of thought I’d get killed eventually.”  
  
“But instead you’re going to be a middle-aged man,” Eames said. “Insanely rich and good-looking.”  
  
Arthur stopped unbuttoning his shirt.  
  
“Come on,” Eames said, watching him. “I like it.”  
  
“So, you were just looking for a rich man all along.”  
  
“Yeah. Exactly. Arthur, what’re you doing in my hotel room?”  
  
Arthur took a deep breath, undid the few buttons left and then dropped the shirt onto the floor. He was going to have to wash it and iron it again anyway. “I thought we might have sex.”  
  
“Alright,” Eames said and patted his knees. “I can do that. But what about tomorrow?”  
  
“I can probably have sex again tomorrow.”  
  
“Impressive,” Eames said. “Just sex?”  
  
“Well,” Arthur said, “no.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“I think,” he said and thought about sitting down on the bed next to Eames but it felt like a little too much, “I _think_ that if you like, maybe we could go for a dinner or something.”  
  
“Like a date.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“We know each other pretty well already,” Eames said, “except that you don’t know my name.”  
  
“I don’t care,” Arthur said, even though he cared deeply.  
  
“Liar,” Eames said and stretched his hand to Arthur. He took it. Eames’ fingers were warm and steady, his were shaking. “What kind of sex do you like?”  
  
“I’m not picky.”  
  
Eames laughed.  
  
“I kind of really want this to happen,” Arthur said and squeezed his hand. “I can be flexible.”  
  
“I’ve actually done a little bit of snooping,” Eames said, fondling the back of Arthur’s hand with his thumb. “It would’ve been bad for me to start dreaming about you if we had happened to want completely different things.”  
  
“And we don’t?”  
  
“I don’t think so.” Eames chewed on his lower lip. “I’ve got condoms and lube. You can fuck me.”  
  
Arthur cleared his throat. “That simple?”  
  
“It’s not simple,” Eames said.

**

It wasn’t simple. Half an hour later, when Eames was facing the mattress and Arthur was very slowly trying to fuck into him, he felt like he should be careful or everything he was feeling would slip out. It had been ages since he had fucked someone that he cared about. He kissed Eames on the back of his neck and the sound Eames let out was barely audible and still it made it a little harder for him to breathe. He kissed the stupid tattoos on Eames’ shoulders and the old scar on his side and the straining muscle at his bicep and the pink spot on his earlobe, and then slowly he stopped kissing Eames and dug his fingers into Eames’ hips and closed his eyes and thought about tomorrow. They would go to work together. And possibly they would leave work together in the evening. They would go for a dinner. And then they would come here, or to his hotel room, and have sex, and kiss like they had done half an hour ago, slowly, with feeling. He didn’t yet know what feeling that was but he was pretty sure it was good.  
  
He came more suddenly than he had meant to, and then he pulled out, made Eames turn onto his back and sat down on Eames’ thighs to finish him with his hand. Eames was looking at him like he was a filthy rich good-looking man and Eames wanted to marry him. He thought that he kind of liked it. He didn’t want to go to the suburbs, he didn’t want a dog and he didn’t want kids, but lately, he had been thinking that maybe he wanted a cat or two and a house with a tiny backyard, and enough spare time to sit there under a tree and read a book. Maybe he wanted to be someone else for a while, someone who woke up and went to the local supermarket and had dinner with friends who knew his actual name; someone who painted his own bedroom and made coffee for his partner and who remembered how to sleep and wasn’t a full-time international criminal. Either he was getting old or it was because of the sleep-deprivation.  
  
He slept in Eames’ bed and woke up at least five times during the night. Every time, Eames was still there, except for one time when he was in the bathroom. Arthur lay on his back and looked at the shadows moving on the ceiling and tried not to think about anything serious. It was always a bad idea to think about anything serious in the middle of the night, and coincidentally, that was how he spent most nights. But then Eames came back from the bathroom, settled next to Arthur on the bed, wrapped his arm around Arthur’s waist and pressed against him.  
  
In the morning, they took turns in the shower and had a quick breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. It was a rainy day. Eames was quiet and not flirting, and Arthur hated the fact that he was wearing the same shirt as yesterday and hadn’t even folded it in the evening. Everyone would notice. But he wasn’t annoyed enough to go to his own hotel first to change the shirt. He rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, opened two top buttons and ignored Eames’ glances. Eames kissed him in the taxi.

**

Five weeks later, Arthur got a text. A few words were misspelled but he got the idea.  
  
“You came,” Eames said, when Arthur met him in front of the airport in London.  
  
“I told you I would come,” Arthur said, put his luggage on the ground and hugged Eames. Eames smelled of cheap laundry soap, cigarettes and sweat. “I didn’t know you smoked.”  
  
“I don’t,” Eames said and hugged him back. “It’s just the stress, you know, the stress from seeing my family. Did you hate the flight?”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “Can I kiss you?”  
  
“Why the hell not?” Eames asked and kissed him on the mouth.  
  
Eames had come with a car. Arthur sat in the passenger seat, looked through the window and wondered what he should say. He hadn’t seen Eames in almost three weeks, not since they had finished the last job and Eames had gone back to England. On the plane to Chicago, Arthur had been sure he had misunderstood something. The way they had talked in Eames’ hotel room late at night and early in the morning had been as if there was a relationship. But maybe Eames always talked that way. Maybe he hadn’t meant it. Maybe he had meant it at the time, when Arthur had been in his bed, but wouldn’t mean it in a week or two. Maybe everything Arthur was kind of thinking about now would turn out to be just a silly dream and too many expectations. Maybe the next time he would see Eames again would be at the next job they would do together.  
  
But here he was, sitting in Eames’ car, on his way to what he supposed was Eames’ house.  
  
“Thank you,” Eames said when they stopped at a red light. Judging by the way he was tapping his fingers against the wheel, they were probably close. “I wasn’t sure if I could ask you to come.”  
  
“Don’t be an idiot,” Arthur said. His voice came out hoarse. “Are you alright?”  
  
Eames glanced at him. “Apparently I’m an idiot. But, yeah. Kind of.”  
  
Arthur took a deep breath. “How’s your mom?”  
  
“Scared,” Eames said. “We’re all scared. I liked the texts you sent me from Chicago, by the way. Especially the ones that were supposed to be hot.”  
  
“Supposed to –”  
  
“Did you read an article about sexting or something?”  
  
Arthur frowned. “Maybe.”  
  
“At first I thought it wasn’t going to work,” Eames said, “and I’ve got to admit, I also kind of asked myself whether I am worthy of an incredibly clever man who doesn’t have a fucking clue how to send an erotic text message to his boyfriend and who then tries to learn it on the internet. But _then_ I read those texts again. And again. And they kind of began to seem pretty hot.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “I kind of liked the way you answered.”  
  
“I’ve read a few articles about sexting as well,” Eames said. “Do you realize that you’re going to be staying at my home?”  
  
Arthur nodded. He had been thinking about it a lot in the past twelve hours.  
  
“And you’re going to meet my family. And possibly my friends.”  
  
“You should probably tell me your name.”  
  
“Nah,” Eames said, “it’s going to be a surprise. Just don’t look too shocked.”  
  
“Do you have a guest room for me or something?”  
  
“No,” Eames said, “I don’t have guest rooms. You’re just going to have to sleep in my bed.”  
  
Eames had two guest rooms in his house. Arthur took a quick shower and then opened the door when Eames knocked on it. Eames was wearing a t-shirt and boxers, and he took the t-shirt off and just stood there in his boxers.  
  
“Am I going to have to take another shower?” Arthur asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” Eames said and tugged his boxers down. Arthur turned the water off, walked to Eames and kissed him. Eames kissed him back intently like he had planned the details. Arthur fucked him against the tile wall, and everything was slippery and Eames kept saying his name and his mind was slow and hazy because of the jetlag and besides, he thought he had heard Eames calling him his _boyfriend_ earlier, in the car. He pulled out after Eames came and then finished himself with his own hand while Eames was leaning both his hands against the wall, trying to catch his breath. The muscles on his back were tense and he flinched when Arthur touched his neck, and then he took another breath and went soft again.  
  
“Boyfriend?” Arthur asked later, when they had had pizza delivered to the house and had watched an episode of _The Crown_ and were in Eames’ bed. Eames was lying on his back, both his hands settled behind his neck like he was purposefully trying to poke Arthur in the face with his elbow.  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “So, sue me.”  
  
“I don’t think I want to,” Arthur said and ran his fingers down Eames’s side under the duvet.

**

Eames’ mother liked Arthur. Arthur wondered if perhaps that was a bad sign, since technically, he was a criminal and all that. But it was difficult to be skeptical, because he also liked Eames’ mother. She asked him where he had met Eames and he said _at work_ without thinking. It turned out Eames had told his mother that he was a lecturer at the university and his area of research was modern art. Then it turned out Eames _was_ a lecturer at the university and his area of research _was_ modern art. Apparently it wasn’t a problem for the university that Eames was away at least eight months every year, because the funding for the art department had been cut anyway.  
  
Eames’ sister seemed lovely and also like the kind of a person who can talk about politics for more than half an hour. Arthur tried to avoid her. He couldn’t remember when he had last read a newspaper. The jet lag wasn’t mixing great with his sleeping problems, but on the other hand, he hadn’t been doing any artificial dreaming for two weeks now and the insomnia definitely wasn’t getting worse. Maybe one day he would sleep like a functional human being again, if only he managed to cut down on the time he spent working. He said that to Eames in the evening when they were driving back to Eames’ place, and Eames was quiet for a long time and then started talking about the weather.  
  
“Arthur?” Eames said, when they were in bed.  
  
“Yeah?” Arthur said, rolling onto his side. He didn’t think he could have sex right now. It had been a long day of trying not to look like a criminal while meeting your boyfriend’s family for the first time. But if Eames wanted, maybe Arthur could jerk him off or something.  
  
“You look tired,” Eames said.  
  
“Yeah, I’m tired. But if you wanted to –”  
  
“No, it’s not that,” Eames said, took his hand under the blanket and started fiddling with his fingers. “If you didn’t have the job, what do you think you’d be doing?”  
  
“I don’t know. Nothing.”  
  
Eames took a deep breath. “I’m getting bored of dreamshare.”  
  
“You are?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Arthur stared at him. “What do you want to –”  
  
“I don’t know,” Eames said, “I really don’t know. But I kind of think – and I know this is going to sound crazy and soppy and all the things you probably hate – I _think_ that one reason why I’ve been doing it for so long is that I’ve wanted to keep working with you. Or I haven’t thought I could give it up. Because I’ve kind of liked you for a very long time.”  
  
“Really.”  
  
“Shut up,” Eames said but smiled quickly before turning serious again. “I’m not saying that I want to live in London –”  
  
“So, you want to live in London.”  
  
“It’s a nice city,” Eames said. “And everyone drinks tea. Anyway, if there’s one thing that I want to take with me when I leave the dreamshare, it’s you.”  
  
“And quite a lot of money.”  
  
“ _Arthur_.”  
  
“Yeah, alright,” Arthur said and squeezed Eames’ hand. “Sorry.”  
  
“I think I’ve been kind of thinking that this would happen eventually,” Eames said. “That finally, after years of trying, you’d respond to my flirting and then we’d have incredible sex and fall in love and become this old couple everyone’s bored of because they’re so damn happy.”  
  
“We aren’t that old.”  
  
“We’re going to be, if we’re lucky.”  
  
“I think,” Arthur said, looking at Eames, “that I could do much less work than I’ve been doing for the past ten years and more, and that I could spend some time in London instead. I hear that there’s an art lecturer who’s very hot.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames said. “Not too hot, I hope. I’m not a jealous guy but I’ve got my limits.”  
  
“I don’t think you need to be worried about that.” Arthur bit his lip. “I didn’t think you were being serious when you flirted with me.”  
  
“Well, maybe I wasn’t in the beginning. I don’t know.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Arthur said and closed his eyes. “We’ll see how it goes.”  
  
“It’s going to go well.”  
  
“You’re an optimist. I don’t understand how you can be an optimist.”  
  
“Good things happen to me all the time,” Eames said, shifting closer to him on the mattress. “Look at you.  
  
“You’re flirting with me again.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames said. “Just think about how well it’s worked out for me in the past. Arthur? What did you think of my name?”  
  
“I thought it’s ridiculous,” Arthur said. “But also sweet.”  
  
“You’re clearly in love with me. Are you going to fall asleep now?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m sorry I insulted your skills at sexting.”  
  
“I don’t mind. I was terrible. But you got off twice, so stop complaining.”  
  
“I just said I’m sorry. Arthur?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I think we’re going to be happy.”  
  
Arthur tried to think about that, but he was too tired. Obviously, Eames was being an intolerable optimist again. But that was what he was like, and Arthur kind of liked him very much.  
  
“Okay,” he said. 


End file.
